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Wednesday, November 12, 2014

"I Have NEVER Seen my Class THIS Engaged!"

A few blog posts back, I wrote about the first time a 5th grade teacher used Explain Everything with iPads to help enhance learning fractions. Yesterday, I had a random 5th grade teacher come up to me and literally ask me, "Can we do something awesome in my class?" I was like, "Uhh yeah!" (This teacher also teaches 5th grade Math / Science and had recently saw what her co-teacher did!) Needless to say, we took a look at what she wanted to do and we designed the lesson from there. Originally the plan was to upload an Explain Everything template with the problems pre-loaded. However, we had issues logging into her Google Drive account so we had to call an audible (again a football reference!) Instead, I printed out the problems on paper and gave each partner one. The teacher modeled the first problem on her iPad so that the students could see how it is done. Once she was done modeling we let the kids start their work. I am a firm believer that a student should be able to work in an environment that they are comfortable in so we let them sit around the room, lay on the floor, sit under desks, or whatever it took for students to be "in the zone." I know one may think that classroom management might be an issue, but it really wasnt because the kids were so engaged. Once the students started wrapping things up, I showed two students how to export them out to Google Drive. They got the hang of it and helped the rest of the class! Once the students were done, I had a mini post-conference with the teacher. She literally told me that she had never seen the kids so engaged. Even the students who had a hard time with discipline were engaged and on task! #eduwin

Anyways here is a work sample of a 5th grader's FIRST time screencasting with a partner!